>The different versions of the "Americans are stupid and/or vicious"
>thesis (to the extent they're seriously meant) can be dismissed as
>lacking surface plausibility. There's no reason to think that such
>a large sample of the earth's population, 290 million or so, is any
>more or less stupid and/or vicious than any other sizeable
>group--Norwegians, Tibetans, Trobriand Islanders, take your pick.
Not in any biological sense, but we're rare, though not unique, in that most of our ancestors migrated here from somewhere else, and fairly recently (most voluntarily, except those that came in chains). So a lot of us descend from the various cranks and strivers that couldn't fit in anywhere else. And we came in ethnic waves, stoking conflict and suspicion. And then there was the whole slavery and race thing. Add that all up, and it is different from Norwegians and Tibetans.
Doug